Lightning Bird ’s fingers finally wrapped themselves around the item he had been seeking so desperately, and he made sure to conceal the triumphant gleam that he so badly wanted to flash across his eyes.
‘Yes, you have won,’ he said softly. ‘Proceed, mighty warrior. Do your duty and end my pathetic existence. Send me to the Shadow Forest.’
Sigurd snarled, and then chuckled as he clenched his fists.
‘Come then, Indian. Let’s dance one final dance.’
‘Oh yes, Ice Bear, I’m ready.’
With that, Lightning Bird sprang suddenly up from the debris, clutching the hand grenade he had found, the pin of which he had pulled a few seconds earlier. He, the last of the Chimariko who still drew breath on this earth, whooped the ancient war cry of his tribe as he tossed the grenade at Sigurd. In two bounding steps he sprang in a diving leap, crashing through the window and soaring out into the night, transforming in mid-air into his grizzly form.
Inside the room, Sigurd’s eyes bulged wide with sudden panic and terror as he saw the grenade sailing through the air towards him, and he tried in vain to turn away from the imminent blast.
He was too late. The explosive detonated.
***
Sigurd did not know how long he lay there, straddling the liminal zone, the dark line between the wet sand and the dry, where the tide of the black sea that was Death licked with morbid hunger at the multicoloured shore of the world of the living. Memories from centuries long-past came to him, brushing at the perimeter of his consciousness like little pieces of driftwood brought in by the waves, and they swirled briefly around his mind, but were then sucked back out to sea again; that eternal ocean from which there could be no return. His heart was slowing, like an oil-starved machine on the verge of seizing. Strength had failed him; he could no longer summon his powers. Indeed, he could not even move his fingers, let alone his limbs.
All he could manage to do, it seemed, was to breathe, more slowly and more shallowly with each lungful of air. Soon there would be no more lungfuls of air.
It was as a bright light was beginning to cut its warming, numbing rays through the edges of his vision that he felt it; the proximity of another of his kind. Was the Indian returning to finish him off, to make sure that he was dead? If so, there was nothing he could do about it; all strength had deserted him now. He did not even have enough left in him to enact the change into his polar bear form.
It was not the Indian, though.
‘My mightiest warrior, lying here broken and defeated. I am disappointed, Sigurd.’
The voice spoke with a soft and almost gentle lilt, yet behind those seemingly innocuous tones there was a gargantuan power, deep and dark and dripping with satanic menace.
‘Yaotl…’
The name crawled like a death-beetle from Sigurd’s blood-caked lips.
‘I’ve been following you, all the way from New York,’ the man said. He was a short, squat individual dressed in an all-black suit, with a black shirt and a black tie. Neatly combed hair, thick and jet-black, sat atop a round, beardless face, the coffee-coloured skin of which was marred only by a few wrinkles around his small black eyes, which were hypnotic in their intensity.
‘We needed Parvati, and you almost had her. Almost. But in the end … you failed.’
Sigurd had no response to this. Instead, he merely released a dry rattle from his dying body. The little man smiled and stared down at Sigurd.
‘No matter, great warrior; we all fail sometimes. Even I could not save my empire from the Spanish four hundred years ago.’
Yaotl walked over to the far corner of the room, where Maksim was still lying in a daze. His life had been spared from the shock wave of the grenade blast by the heavy oaken desk, and now he was just starting to come to. Yaotl stared at him for a moment, and then reached down. He grabbed Maksim by the collar of his white silk shirt – now spattered liberally with blood – and hauled him over the desk with a strength that belied his size. He dragged the incoherently mumbling Ukrainian across the floor to where Sigurd was lying, and dumped the man next to the Viking. He then reached into his suit coat and pulled out a long, thin case, which he opened. Inside of it was a scalpel.
His eyes were focused with a cold, almost reptilian gaze as he unbuttoned Maksim’s shirt. With calm, steady hands he plunged the scalpel into the Ukrainian’s chest, making a deep, yawning incision. As Maksim started to regain consciousness, he realised what was happening and began to scream and thrash about on the floor, but Yaotl pinned his arms down with his knees, keeping him immobile. When the incision was complete, Yaotl carefully set the scalpel down, ignoring the blood that was cascading from the gaping wound in Maksim’s chest, and then he plunged his right hand into the bloody gash, seeking the man’s still-beating heart.
He found it and wrapped his fingers around it, ignoring Maksim’s terrible howls of agony and terror. Gripping the beating heart with his right hand, he placed his left hand on Sigurd’s forehead and then began to call on his powers, whispering an ancient Aztec ritual chant. Energy, amplified by the power in this place, began to crackle and surge through the conduit of Yaotl’s body as the dark smoke and flame pulled the life force from Maksim’s body into Sigurd’s. Maksim began to shudder and convulse as every last molecule of energy was torn from his body, stolen and transferred into Sigurd’s, with the electricity leaping from cell to cell, re-energising and recharging as the red sparks flew and jumped.
With a final shudder Maksim’s body stopped writhing as death draped its dark, suffocating cloak over him, and the moment the gangster died, Sigurd’s
